Neutrinos Travel at Sublight Speeds

CERN’s latest press release confirms the suspicions from last year’s result: neutrinos travel slower than light, and last year’s results were a result of a systematic error which has since been found and corrected.

3 replies on “Neutrinos Travel at Sublight Speeds”

  1. Let me make sure I have this right: since neutrinos have mass (albeit, a very, very small amount), they don’t actually move at the speed of light; rather, they just have a speed that’s so close to lightspeed that it’s effectively the same.

    • Precisely. The difference between neutrino speed and lightspeed cannot be accurately measured when they travel Earth-sized distances with today’s equipment. To measure the speed of a neutrino, we need to either make more sensitive equipment or set up neutrino sources on one planet and detectors on another.

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